Wild Card (22 page)

"And stay the hell away from her, if you're smart. The last man who pissed her off like that

nearly ended up with a wrench buried in the back of his head when she went after him. I have a

feeling she wouldn't deliberately miss where you're concerned. I wouldn't if I were her."

Noah watched as his brother disappeared through the other door. He stared at the door to the

garage, then the door Rory had left through. Through the window he watched as Toby James

strode across the lot, throwing Rory a frown as he passed.

Noah leaned against the desk behind him as Toby entered the office.

"Still pissing everyone off?" the boy grunted, as though it were a given.

Noah stared back at him coolly.

"Great," Toby muttered, shook his head then moved to the desk behind Noah. "Can you move

your butt for me? I need to get some work done here."

Noah turned his head, stared the boy down, and watched him slowly pale. At least he could still

intimidate
someone
.

"Maybe not." Toby sat down, pulled a list of invoices from the stack at the side of the desk, and powered up the computer.

Noah moved then. He opened the garage door, revealing the sight of his wife's knees sticking

out from under a car, and felt his cock go stone hard in a heartbeat. As though it hadn't been

hard to start with.

Her legs were spread over the sides of the mechanic's roller; whatever the hell she was doing

under that car it wasn't something she had done during their marriage.

Where was his wife? And why the hell was this woman pretending to be her making the blood

surge hard and heavy through his veins?

He was furious, aroused, and intrigued. And damned determined. Tonight, he was definitely

getting into his wife's pants again.

Lifting his gaze from her jean-clad legs poking beneath the car, he looked across the garage

and caught sight of Nikolai Steele. Alias Nicolas Steele. The six-foot-six Russian lifted his

gaze from the motor he was working on, his ice-blue eyes stone hard, staring back at Noah

before nodding slightly.

Noah's jaw bunched. He had work to do tonight before he could treat himself to another taste of

Sabella. But when he was finished, his wife had best watch out.

As the day progressed, the garage eventually locked up, and Noah got ready for his weekly

little night on the town, he couldn't get Sabella out of his mind.

The way she had stared him and Rory down. She hadn't screamed or yelled. She hadn't cried.

She simply stated hard cold facts and her intentions. If Rory made decisions that affected her

livelihood again, then he could have all of it. And as she had said, she had been the one who

had walked into the garage and saved it.

The last person Noah had expected to be able to run the place was Sabella, with her too pretty

hair, which she had obviously had colored. How had he never known she colored her hair? It

was still bemusing to watch her, those darker blond tresses longer now, running around flipping

that braid over her shoulder.

She didn't do the manicures and the pedicures anymore. And he had to admit, he might miss

that a little bit, but only because he'd always enjoyed knowing his "girly" wife had everything she needed to be girly.

Finding out she wasn't so girly, and that she had held back parts of herself, both infuriated him

and made him determined to learn exactly what he hadn't known about her.

As he sat in the smoky, dimly lit bar later that night and talked to men he didn't want to talk to

as he played the friendly curious mechanic, he couldn't get over the look on her face earlier that

day.

Pure, livid determination. She hadn't shown her anger, but there wasn't a doubt left in his or

Rory's minds that she wasn't serious. To-the-bone serious. She would sell out her share of the

garage and she would leave.

Backbone. She had backbone.

Why had she never shown that part of herself to him? Why had she hidden herself?

Probably for the same reasons he had concealed the darker parts of himself, he thought with an

inner grimace. It seemed he and Sabella both had held back during those first, tempestuous

years together. They'd only had two years together. Not long enough. Not nearly long enough

for them to really get to know each other.

"You know, the Black Collars, they don't like strangers in town asking questions either," the

retired ranch hand from one of the outlying ranches commented as he and Noah shared a beer

at the end of the bar.

Jesse Bairnes was well known to Noah. A friend of Grandpop's that Noah remembered.

"They don't like a lot of people," Noah stated.

"Specially those different from them," Jesse said, his voice pitched low. "I have a friend, pure Irish. His son has lived in hell." Jesse shook his head at that.

In hell? Grant Malone?

"How so?" Noah asked him.

Jesse shook his head, his lined expression somber. "Lost his whole damned family," he said,

sighing. "Ever' one of 'em. The militia only leaves him alone 'cause he keeps his head down,

doesn't try to do anything more than run his ranch, and killin' him wouldn't be enough for them.

But they got nothing else to hurt him with now." The old man shrugged. "Shame, it was."

Noah stared down at his beer. Jesse couldn't be talking about the Malones.

"How do they get the power to do this?" he murmured. "I've not heard much about them and

I've made my rounds of Texas plenty of times." Hell, he'd lived here, worked here, loved here.

How hadn't he known?

"Quiet is always better." Jesse shrugged. "They're paranoid 'bout secrecy. The only ones that talk are the young dumb ones. They weed those out as they try to climb in the ranks. No one

that cain't keep their traps shut makes it to those hunts I hear they do." Jesse turned back to

him, his faded dark eyes somber. "They been huntin' for years and no one cared till they killed

some FBI agents. Now ain't that a shame?"

Noah nodded. "That's a hell of a shame."

He finished his beer, completed his conversation with Jesse, and headed from the bar. The late-

evening visits to the local watering hole were giving him a new insight into the changes that

had been developing in his hometown. Or perhaps, more accurately, the underground

intricacies that were finally showing themselves after decades.

He was nearly certain now that the Black Collar Militia's ranks were still small enough, here at

least, that pinpointing one of them wasn't going to be easy. That or they were hiding

themselves better than he could have imagined.

Though, after his search of Mike Conrad's office, he knew at least one of the members. Black

masks for the members, black collars for the victims. How the hell had he managed to keep his

eyes closed to what was going on in his own hometown? This wasn't a new organization. It was

something that had been building, growing, for decades.

An even better question, he told himself, was, how had he managed to miss what kind of a man

Mike was through the years of their friendship? He had trusted the other man. Laughed with

him, drank with him, and he hadn't suspected. If someone had told him Mike was involved with

a militia, he would have laughed at the thought.

The militia wasn't something new. Hell, there were plenty of militias with varying agendas all

over the west, but few that were walking in the footsteps of this one.

Late-night hunts for illegals. Kidnapping legal aliens and taking them into the canyons of the

national park to torture and murder them.

Their agenda was an atrocity to humanity.

Leaving the bar, he almost paused. The second he stepped into the sultry, late-summer heat, he

could feel his skin prickling.

He almost grinned. The need to expend the energy raging through him was about to find an

outlet. Evidently, someone didn't like the questions he had been asking over the weeks. Or the

people he was talking to. He didn't tense, he didn't do anything to overtly prepare his body for

what was to come. He knew where it was, as though the pores of his skin were soaking in the

danger lying in wait in the parking lot.

Bullet or gang? Gun or knife?

He couldn't feel a scope on his head, that left other means. And oh, he would feel a scope on

his head. He had learned well that feeling under Fuentes's tutelage. Diego Fuentes had liked to

play with his captives. The gun sighted on him, the bullet burying within inches of his head as

he was chained to a wall, blindfolded, unable to avoid whatever was coming.

Yeah, Noah knew the feel of gun sights. Just as he knew the scent of violence. And he was

moving closer toward it.

He was ready for the dark figure that jumped out at him. The knife barely grazed his bicep as

he used his attacker's momentum to jerk him to the side, break his arm, and pull the knife from

his grip.

Noah left him where he was lying and he gripped the knife, steel lying along his wrist as he

lifted his arm, and braced himself.

The shadows flowed from the darkness. Black masks, knives instead of guns.

"You want to leave town, Blake," one of the shadows rasped through the darkness as half a

dozen darkened figures began to surround him.

"Oh, I don't know," Noah drawled. "I think I like this little town. Lots of excitement. I might stick around a while."

He let them surround him. He could feel it now, the blood surging through him, cold hard death

filling him. He wouldn't be taken again, never again. And he wouldn't be defeated. Diego

Fuentes hadn't managed to break him and he would be damned if a few home-grown terrorists

were going to get the best of him.

"Sticking around could be bad for your health," another informed him with a nasally accent.

"Are you boys here to chat or to give me a good time?" He grinned back at them. "The odds are almost even. Let's play."

"Six to one," another said with a laugh. "You're outnumbered, motherfucker."

And Noah chuckled. They had no idea, no clue what a killer he could be. But he knew. He

knew, because he had been killing for far too many years before this little show-and-tell began.

"Then come get me," he invited them with a little flicking motion of his hands. "If you can."

They were good. The shuffle, the life-or-death dance that ensued spiked the adrenaline always

ready to pour into him. He used it. felt the power feeding into his muscles as they came at him.

Steel met steel. Noah kicked his attackers' feet out from under them, jumped aside, and met the

next. He didn't kill them. He didn't want them dead. He wanted them alive and bleeding. He

wanted to know who to follow, who to suspect when it was over, and the bandages, the

injuries, couldn't be hidden.

He wanted to leave witnesses and he wanted the bastards to remember what the hell they were

dealing with.

He buried the knife in one attacker's thigh, stole another, and sliced across another man's

midriff. Cutting them a little here and there, relishing the feel of steel biting into flesh and the

sound of grunts, painful cries, and the snap of bones when he could manage it.

They were down from six to two. He stared back at the one facing him and smiled at the smell

of blood.

"Do you want to keep this up?" he asked the other man, staring into dark eyes, memorizing the

curve of the face beneath the stretchy black mask. "Come on, asshole. I can slice and dice all

night long."

He proved his point. He sliced a forearm, his knife bit through denim and cut a deep furrow

across another thigh as he kicked out, brought down the bastard trying to blindside him. Noah

stole his blade and buried it in the other man's shoulder.

"That's going to hurt," he said with a chuckle, jumping back and watching as the others limped

away.

The last one pulled a gun.

Spinning, Noah jumped, buried his foot in the bastard's stomach, gripped his wrist and twisted

until the gun dropped to the ground.

He took a blow to the kidney and grunted, his elbow slamming into the man's throat. Bastards.

They should have used the gun first.

He followed the elbow to the throat with a fist to the man's gut, knocked him backward and

then watched as he turned tail and ran to join his little buddies. Headlights flashed in front of

him as he rolled and lifted the gun from the gravel before jumping to his feet.

Noah stepped back between several other vehicles, ducked, and watched the truck hauling his

new buddies squeal out of sight.

He breathed in deeply, flexed his shoulder, and knew his own aches and pains would show up

soon. Hell, he hadn't come out of the fight unscathed. He could feel the blood soaking his

shoulder, arm, and side. Those knives had been razor sharp and there had been too many to

avoid all at once.

He grinned at the thought of that as he pulled his keys from his jeans and found the Harley.

Checking it out, he didn't take long to find the little device created to trigger a spark into the

gas line. He would have been toast if that little baby had gone off.

Unlocking a saddlebag, he slid it inside along with the handgun, checked out the cycle again

then watched as Nicolas eased from the shadows at the back of the bar. His eyes met Noah's for

one long, telling moment.

The big Russian had watched the fight, obviously. His gaze flickered over Noah.

"You're bleeding. Do you need a ride?" His voice was low as he approached Noah.